


Burn the Midnight Oil

by Sniperette



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Introspection, M/M, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character, and a few panic attacks, isolation gives keith too much time to think, just exploring how Keith might be holding up with the BoM, vld s4 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-22 03:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12472756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sniperette/pseuds/Sniperette
Summary: He repeats it like a mantra to the beat of his fists on a punchbag.His knuckles sting just as much as his eyes do.





	Burn the Midnight Oil

There were times when Keith struggled to breathe.

Like in the dead of night, when silence was a heavy weight sprawled across his chest, mocking him for his loneliness. The air always seemed to be too thick, too intangible to inhale and his fingers would claw desperately at nothing but the grief that had made itself at home in his chest.

His shoulder feels numb from the ghostly pressure of a comforting grip and it nearly breaks him in two, because he knows- 

-knows that when he turns to look, there'll be nothing there.

The grief threatens to drag up a lung along with itself as he coughs and splutters, sucking in the lethargic air that ironically makes him feel like he's still suffocating.

The vulnerability that comes with his graceless waking moments is brushed off to the side. Keith ignores the remaining tendrils that call him back to bed, that tell him to curl up and wallow in a moment of weakness. There's better and more useful things to do with his time and energy, self-pity be damned.

He repeats it like a mantra to the beat of his fists on a punchbag.

His knuckles sting just as much as his eyes do.

* * *

 

Kolivan finds him there, in the early hours of the morning. Keith likes to think that he's frowning out of concern, but it's hard to tell; frowning seems to be his default expression.

The stoic leader stands slightly off to the side, observing his movements and cataloguing his flaws and errors to lecture him about another day. It's only when Keith finally stops hitting the worn out sack that he steps forward, gesturing to the blood trickling down his forearms. The younger Blade obediently lifts his hands and lets them be inspected.

"Go get them checked out in the medical bay. I can't afford your recklessness putting the mission at risk."

Keith nods meekly, and tiredly begins to trudge away.

"I expected more of you, paladin."

The name makes him freeze momentarily, and fires a pang of sorrow through the spaces between his ribs. He has to choke on the urge to let loose a hysterical laugh as his instinct to breathe abandons him again.

He's not a paladin anymore. Hasn't been for a while.

Kolivan doesn't seem to acknowledge or correct his mistake, and Keith can feel yellow eyes burning at his back as he stumbles out the doors of the training room.

Once he's finally lost himself in the maze of corridors that make up the central hub of the Blade of Marmora, he lets the harsh laughter filter freely into the air.

Concern? _Ha_.

* * *

 

Halfway through a meeting, his binder starts to itch. 

 

 He scratches at it absentmindedly, focusing more on the holographic images of planets that dance around the room. They highlight the masks of the other Blades in shades of yellow, green, blue, and pink; if Keith wasn't busy trying to pry the crushing grip of homesickness away from the back of his mind, he might have considered the light show as pretty.

The colours indicate their status in the war against the Empire; yellow for the planets offering their homes for the displaced survivors of destroyed systems; green representing the ones who were willing to provide supplies, technology, information and resources to both the front line and to the worlds in need of assistance; blue marked out the rebel bases; pink symbolised the diplomats who used their political finesse to encourage other leaders to join the cause and turn their backs on the Galran regime.

And then there were the two other colours that floated around him, their distance painful.

Purple, almost lost to the lighting that was normally used throughout the station. These were the planets that were willing and ready to fight.

Red, slowly diminishing. Still stuck in the Empire's reach, but gradually being liberated one by one and changing to another shade on the colour spectrum.

Red was bad. But Keith knew Red personally, and would protest for its innocence if he could only remember what it felt like to have that comforting presence nudging at the edges of his conscience, giving him the confidence to speak his mind.

But there's nothing there.

His chest feels a little bit tighter, and he blames it on the binder.

* * *

The water swirls down the drain, dragging bright streaks of red with it. He feels little relief at watching it disappear into oblivion, but he's thankful to be clean at least.

The towel is rough and dark, but Keith still carefully tries to avoid getting any blood on it. Going through the motions, scrubbing his skin dry, and ignoring the cramps in his gut help to keep him distracted from dwelling on the situation he had narrowly avoided a few hours ago.

Hours, vargas, whatever.

He's tired of thinking.

Keith shoves the towel down the chute in his room (he seriously hopes that it leads to the laundry room and not the waste disposal unit. He would've and should've asked by now, but at this point he's too afraid and embarrassed to ask) and pulls on a clean outfit. It's plain black, long sleeved and soft- standard clothes for when he's not on a mission but he doesn't want to wear the only other outfit he brought with him. He'd left his paladin armour back at the castle, seeing as he didn't have much use for it anymore.

He wonders if it's on display in its case still. Does the sight of it make the others pause from time to time? Does the memory of him in red armour cross their minds unbidden after putting their own armour away? Do they actually miss him, or does his armour serve as a bitter reminder that he's the second paladin to have left Voltron and their team behind?

Maybe its been moved to storage instead. No point in letting it take up space that another set of armour could be using, armour that's actually worn by its paladin on a regular basis. It's only practical, but Keith supposes that he couldn't really blame them if it was petty too. His red armour was a painful reminder that they didn't need; red was bad, and so was he for letting them go.

He screws his eyes shut, and tries to breathe. When he opens them again, he finds himself squinting through the tears that burn his eyelids at a room to seems to shake and sway.

The memories still creep in despite his best efforts to stave them off. They're bright and they're loud, bleeding into his blurred vision until he can't quite tell what's real and what's not anymore. He stretches an arm out, reaching for anything that he can grab on to to ground himself, but there's nothing there; nothing except empty space and the floor which rushes up to greet him.

There's a sharp pain in his shoulder, and it makes him ache for something-

-no, _someone_ -

Fuck, he can't think straight-

Can't see-

 _Can't think can't see can't fucking breathe_ -

He scoots himself backwards across the floor, his fight or flight instincts screaming at him to run. Something blocks his path- a wall? A person? A chair? - and he presses his back against it, begging for whatever it was that had trapped him to relent and let him escape. It doesn't give way, and Keith feels his throat close up even more.

It's like a shield, but he's stuck on the wrong side. He's seeing red everywhere now, it's like an alarm blaring in his head and he has to do something, anything, to get rid of that shield.

Red is bad. Red means danger.

The walls are closing in on him, and he never thought that being surrounded in a blanket of red could be so suffocating. It feels like being smothered and burned alive at the same time, the smoke is making his eyes sting and his ears are ringing from his own screams-

How can he scream if he can't breathe?

 _Oh_.

There's a brief moment of clarity amongst the chaos of his mind, and he thinks that he can hear voices in the distance. Is it Matt? He was the last person he talked to, right? 

But Keith's pretty sure that Matt only has one voice, and that there's at least five- no, seven- fuck, maybe even eight?- outside his door. His door that he's pressed up against.

It takes him a few minutes to fully realise that he's neither dead nor dying.

It doesn’t make it any easier to breathe.

He's dimly aware of his own movements as he sluggishly struggles to his feet, using the door for support. The voices outside have gone quiet.

"Keith?"

Shiro. It's Shiro, and Keith wants to cry at how _scared_ his voice sounds. It's like Keith is back in that Galran fighter jet, but this time Shiro's aware and afraid of Keith's actions.

He nudges the door open slightly.

"Shiro, please. Only Shiro."

He feels guilty when the hopeful faces of his friends falter slightly, but he can't face them all at once right now. He's surprised to see Kolivan there with them- he's as calm and stoic as ever, but this time Keith is certain that he can see the concern etched into the lines on the older Blade's face. He chokes on a happy, if somewhat ashamed, laugh.

* * *

 

He closes the door after Shiro slips in, and sinks down to the ground in front of it. Shiro joins him silently.

Keith's still struggling to get his breathing under control, but there's a cold metal hand rubbing circles into his back and it soothes the apology that's stuck in his throat. There's no need for words right now. There'll be time to talk later.

' _Later_ '. He's never loved that word more than right now, because he knows that he's lucky to even have a ' _later_ '.

Because later means the future, and there's still a future out there for him.

Shiro's hand stills on his back, but the fingers press in, feeling for something.

"I've not got my binder on, if that's what you're wondering." God, his voice sounds hoarse as hell.

Shiro's hand resumes its circular journey.

The other one reaches for him, drawing him in closer. He lets Keith bury his face in the crook of his neck, because it helps them both confirm that Keith is still alive.

He can feel Shiro's skin press against his cheek, and the collar of his shirt is irritating his sensitive neck but he can't complain. Not when he's pressed close in an embrace that tells him that he's wanted.

He hopes that after all this is over, after Zarkon is dead and gone and under the dirt where he belongs, he can take Shiro someplace nice. Somewhere quiet, where there are different colours to marvel at and no one knows who they are; where no one knows what stories their scars can tell.

Keith slips further into Shiro's hold, and finds himself a home.

He's slowly learning how to breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> This might turn into a series of drabbles, but for now have this weird introspective fic I guess.


End file.
